A Lesson in Winning and Losing

The New England Patriots, the Memphis Tigers and Oxford University 2nd team

A highly successful NFL franchise, a No.1 seed in this year’s NCAA tournament, a college team in a backwater of the basketball universe. It shouldn’t be too difficult to spot the one member of the above list that doesn’t quite belong there.

Yes, you’re right. It’s the 2007/08 New England Patriots: the undefeated regular season champs.

That same Patriots team that absolutely destroyed opposition in the first months of the season, running up the score and scoring eff-you touchdowns well after the outcome was decided. That same Patriots team that entered the Super Bowl as the overwhelming favourite, as the first team since the 1972 Miami Dolphins that had a chance to finish a season with a perfect record. That same unbeaten and seemingly unbeatable Patriots that got away from their creative, unpredictable offensive spreads in the Super Bowl and eventually lost the game on a miracle play by Eli Manning.

In 2003/04, my final year in college, I played on Oxford University’s 2nd team. I had been sitting at the end of the bench for the 1st team’s first two games and at the end of one practice, the coach took me aside and offered me to play for the 2nd team. I never looked back and with a group without a single player taller than 6-5, we won the regular season and eventually the National Championship of 2nd teams.

Now, you can ask yourself why you should care about that. Great Britain may be known for all sorts of things – but basketball prowess is not among them (my apologies to Luol Deng!). Well, I believe that college basketball’s Memphis Tigers (and many other teams) can draw a lesson from how our season unfolded – a lesson you cannot learn from last year’s gridiron stars from Boston. We – just like Tom Brady and friends – routed our opposition by playing aggressive press defense, running the fast-break and driving and kicking to open shooters from the wing. The difference was, however, that we lost one game on our way to the title.

In fact, I lost it. It was still early in the season, we hadn’t been practicing much and we knew that our opponent, Wolverhampton, also hadn’t lost yet. None of us knew the area, we couldn’t find the school and only got into the gym 10 minutes before tip-off. Still, we led by about 10 with a couple of minutes to go when we somehow stopped defending. Down two with five seconds remaining, we had the ball out of bounds under Wolverhampton’s basket. We ran a double-screen, I came free, got the ball from our point guard and – clank – missed a terrible fade-away.

Memphis coach John Calipari – his team still unbeaten - was asked earlier in the season what he thought of his team’s chances of rolling through the regular season unscathed and whether it would be a good thing. His short and concise reply: “It all depends on if New England wins it all.”

It is true what they say that winning leads to more winning. But too much winning can also lead to complacency. Once things don’t go your way in a game, you struggle to come up with answers – because you’re just not used to doing it anymore. Not to mention the intense media-coverage the pursuit of perfection attracts.

John Calipari knows as much from his own experience. His 1996 Massachusetts team that reached the Final Four won 26 straight to start the season before its first loss. Asked about that former team after the Tiger’s also lost for the first time after 26 games – at the hands of No. 2 Tennessee – Calipari admitted that without this one loss, the pressure to go undefeated would probably have prevented them from reaching the Final Four. Though Memphis is by no means guaranteed to win the tournament this year – UCLA and North Carolina look like the teams to beat – at least they don’t have to carry the dual burden of hyped-up expectations and a deceptive feeling of invincibility.

Our second-to-last game of the regular season, Wolverhampton came to town for the rematch. Neither team had lost another game all season and thus the winner of this game would also win the division. And only the division champ moved on to the national tournament. We had been waiting for this game for weeks and had practiced as hard ever. We didn’t just want to win, we wanted to annihilate them. By halftime, we were up by 25 and we cruised to an easy victory that propelled us all the way to the highly sought after UK National Championship of University 2nd Teams.

So what? I didn’t get to play in front of a billion-strong audience and Gisele Bündchen wouldn’t come anywhere near me. But hey, I got to dance and scream and spray beer in a gym somewhere on the outskirts of Newcastle. Stuff that dreams are made of…

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Created by: Ole